Search This Blog

Sunday, 13 October 2013

Cable Car

Andrew Smith Hallidie of San Francisco, California developed the cable car system when he saw a loaded horse-drawn San Francisco streetcar slide backwards on a slippery, wet hill. The heavily weighted car dragged five of the horses to their deaths and the catastrophe prompted Andrew Hallidie and his partners to do something to prevent this from happening again.

Hallidie's Clay Street Hill Railroad, the first successful cable hauled street railway, first operated in San Francisco in August 1873.